10 Movies that Outrageously Strain Technology

By Ryan Gowland

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We're well seasoned when it comes to suspending disbelief and buying into a fairly incredible premise. As technology becomes more advanced, it seems movie storylines are becoming even more implausible and outrageous. Disney's Tron: Legacy follows an abandoned son (Garrett Hedlund) who is transported into a computer world in order to find his missing father (Jeff Bridges). Digitizing a human being and placing him in a cyberworld could be a difficult plot for audiences to swallow ... if they hadn't already bought it in the 1982 original.

But Tron isn't the only movie to proclaim that "technology can do anything." Here are 10 movies that take technology to the limit — and then keep going and going.

10. Inception (2010)
Director Christopher Nolan's thriller introduced a method for entering people's dreams that could fit into a briefcase (but isn't nanotechnology—see Gamer below). Master dream thief Leonardo DiCaprio's plan for "inception," or planting an idea into a victim's head, required the entering of several dreams, a process so layered that audiences were ultimately left wondering whether the entire movie was a dream. Sadly, once dream-entering technology is invented, it may prove more satisfying to stay in the dream world than live in the real one. Or is that what happens? Can anyone explain this?

9. Avatar (2009)
According to writer-director James Cameron, by the year 2154 human beings will be able to travel to distant star systems and interact with a humanoid species called the Na'vi through the use of genetically engineered Na'vi-human bodies, but we still won't care a lick about the environment. While 144 years offers a large window for progress, it still won't stop mining from being the most destructive, yet infinitely profitable, business that humans can undertake. However, at least we'll be able to spot untrustworthy people from the series of symmetrical scars on their faces.

8. Gamer (2009)
Think that controling a human being as if he's a video game character is too unrealistic? Well, maybe now it is, but what about in the future? A mere 25 years from now, Gamer predicts a future where nanotechnology can be used to command a prisoner's (Gerard Butler) mind so that he can be controlled by a teenage kid (Logan Lerman) in the country's most popular video game, Slayers. Butler is a lethal killing machine who hopes to earn his freedom by making it through 30 games of brutal warfare, a storyline seemingly stolen from the 2008 Death Race remake.

In science, the prefix "nano" refers to size, but in Hollywood "nanotechnology" has a much broader definition: any technology required for a movie's story. In Gamer, "nanites" are the nanotechnology in question, used to replace brain cells so that a third party can use a human being like a Wii remote. To date, no one has actually created "nanites," but clearly that realm of science will be conquered by 2035.

7. The Matrix (1999)
Writers and directors Andy and Lana Wachowski flipped the "entering the alternate reality" plot on its head by making the real world the fake world, and the actual real world one that is dominated by robots who keep human beings hooked up to a simulated reality so they can use their body heat as an energy source. While convincing audiences that humanity will one day serve as mere batteries is a feat all its own, the biggest coup was casting Keanu Reeves as a computer-hacking, kung-fu fighting bad-ass ... and pulling it off. The movie left audiences questioning whether their own day-to-day lives were indeed the machinations of a computer program, which no one can ultimately be sure of until someone has the decency to unplug us.

6. The Net (1995)
Years removed from The Matrix, The Net was released just when the Internet was becoming prevalent and public records were becoming electronic. The Net follows Sandra Bullock as a computer analyst who stumbles upon evidence of cyber-terrorism and soon finds herself on the run from criminals and with her identity completely erased. Director Irwin Winkler's movie preyed on audiences' fears about our electronic files and earned $110 million in worldwide box office.

Despite the movie's success, identity theft has only proliferated, even without a secret conspiracy. In fact, according to the Federal Trade Commission's estimates, as many as 9 million Americans have their identities stolen each year (though the crime is more akin to "identity impersonation" than "theft"). Winkler's son Charles Winkler attempted another public warning by directing the 2006 sequel, but, the second time around, no one really noticed.

5. Back to the Future (1985)
Not satisfied with simply building a time machine, Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown (Christopher Lloyd) transforms a DeLorean sports car so that it only has to reach 88 mph for time-travel liftoff. Despite director Robert Zemeckis' outlandish premise, Back to the Future became a box-office success as it followed young Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) as he journeys to 1955 and meets the high school version of his parents. Even more improbable than ripping through the space-time continuum? Reaching 88 mph in a Southern California parking lot.

Like typical teenagers, the two nerds have only one desire from their new creation: to lose their ... tags as losers and bring them newfound popularity. She's a perfect candidate for the task since, after being created out of magazine clippings and a plastic doll, she can also create fake IDs and turn an over-bearing, military-school-attending brother (Bill Paxton) into a giant blob.

3. The Last Starfighter (1984)
For every parent complaining that his/her child is "wasting time" playing video games, there is The Last Starfighter, which follows a teenager (Lance Guest) whose obsessive play of the stand-up arcade game Starfighter eventually lands him a spot as a pilot in an intergalactic war between two alien races. While using video game simulators isn't unheard of for military training, apparently in space all that's required to operate a Gunstar spacecraft is the dexterity and skill to master the complicated double-joystick and button combination.

2. War Games (1983)
As personal computer use began to rise in the 1980s, so too did the paranoia over the growing presence of a modem. Could a teenage kid in Seattle really accidentally hack into a NORAD supercomputer and potentially unleash a nuclear war? That's the premise of War Games, where director John Badham successfully blended Cold War fears with the public's ignorance over what a home computer could accomplish. OK, sure, in 1998 a 19-year-old accessed computers owned by NASA and the Pentagon, but that was on purpose, not by accident.

1. Videodrome (1983)
Director David Cronenberg's horror movie proposes that simply watching a TV show can take control of your mind, leaving your reality a television hallucination. On the surface, it doesn't seem too far from reality — up until James Woods' stomach starts becoming a VCR and a handy gun-storing unit. While Videodrome has become a cult success, it still hasn't stopped people from turning off Jersey Shore. Long live the new flesh, indeed.

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